


The FBI's Most Unwanted

by Eienvine



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Sifki Week 2020, The X-Files - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eienvine/pseuds/Eienvine
Summary: Agent Loki Odinson is a man on a mission: to solve those cases the rest of the FBI writes off as unexplainable. And no one's going to stop his quest: not his father, the powerful senator who disapproves of the direction he's taken his career, and not the new partner that his superiors are forcing on him, the one they hope will be able to rein him in.Although, he has to say, he didn't expect that they'd choose his childhood crush Sif to be his new partner. Nor did he expect that Sif, despite having no patience for his supernatural theories, would become his closest ally and staunchest supporter.Maybe together they can find the truth that he knows is out there.
Relationships: Loki/Sif (Marvel)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 33





	1. Case file #401-HQ-1224

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sifki Week day 7: AU, as a way to combine two of my great loves: Sifki and The X-Files.
> 
> Where to even start with this weird little story I have written? Like yes, this is definitely a Sifki X-Files AU, but to be more precise, it's really an X-Files AU of my At the Mirk and Midnight Hour story I posted in January. And I definitely wonder if combining these three disparate worlds (Sifki, the X-Files, and fairies/European folklore) is stretching it a little too far? But also I think this is an entertaining story, so whatever, I'm posting it anyway.
> 
> This was always meant to be a multi-chapter story, but I decided to post the first chapter for the AU day of Sifki week, which means posting before I have the bulk of the story written (which is how I usually prefer to operate). Future chapters will be forthcoming--I already have chapter 2 written and chapter 3 outlined--but I can't promise when they'll be posted; it'll probably be a while. But I do have the whole mythology mapped out! (Which is more than I can say for Chris Carter when he started The X-Files! OOH SICK BURN!)
> 
> (If you're not familiar with the X-Files: many fans have sort of a love-hate relationship with Chris Carter.)
> 
> (I am outing myself as a massive X-Files geek right now, aren't I?)
> 
> Anyway I hope you enjoy this.

. . . . . .

 _May 5, 1993_ _  
_ _Washington, DC_ _  
_ _Case file #401-HQ-1224_

. . . . . .

The knock on the door is firm and confident, and Loki Odinson rolls his eyes.

He supposes he could lie to himself and pretend there’s a chance that it’s someone there to give him important news or seek his help, but he knows that’s not the case. No one comes down to this forlorn basement office, if they can help it. And no one talks to him, if they can help it. He knows what they call him up there: Loco Odinson, the crazy Fed who sees things that aren’t there, the one who threw away a promising career as a profiler to investigate make-believe crimes.

(Thor might knock, if he were still in DC, but Thor’s been assigned to the embassy in Australia as part of the FBI’s Legal Attaché program for over a year.)

So that knock on the door can only be the new partner that Section Chief Eir has been threatening him with for a month now. And Loki is in no mood to play nice.

“Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted,” he calls, not bothering to look up from the slides he’s organizing.

The door opens anyway, and he glances up, prepared for a fight. But the figure standing in the doorway steals away all his words.

It’s Sif. Sif Tyrsdottir, of all people, is the agent that Eir and the powers that be (powers that include his father, he knows perfectly well) have assigned to keep an eye on him.

He’s not sure if his life has just gotten a lot better or a lot worse.

He shakes himself from his shock. “Sif,” he says tightly.

“Loki,” she grins. “Or should I say, ‘partner?’”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail?”

Sif, bless her heart, takes it as teasing, and her smile is warm and genuine as she steps into the room.

She looks different from the last time he saw her, at her college graduation party. Back when they were friends, growing up together in Massachusetts, she was always dressed in a t-shirt and jeans (or, just as likely, athletic clothing, because she was always coming from a track meet or lacrosse practice or a basketball game). Even in college, the only real change was that her omnipresent ponytail had been traded in favor of a chin-length bob. But now she’s in a pantsuit, sharply tailored and rather impressive; her hair, still bobbed, is tucked smoothly behind her ears.

“Hey,” she admonishes him with a laugh, “I’m looking forward to it.”

He glances at the badge clipped to her blazer. Yep, that’s an FBI ID badge with her face and name. “This is unexpected,” he says helplessly.

“Yeah, did you hear I’d joined the FBI? I figured my parents would have mentioned it to yours.”

“I heard,” he says, and hesitates. “Your mom said it was because—I’m sorry about Haldor,” he finishes uselessly, feeling like this meeting has absolutely slipped away from him.

Her smile gets a little rueful, but her voice is reassuring. “It’s been over a year,” she says. “I’m doing all right. And, you know, it made me finally figure out what I really want to do with my life: join the FBI and stop criminals. Maybe I can keep someone else from having to lose a fiancé.”

“When did you finish the Academy?”

“Just last month,” she grins. “This is my first assignment. Can you believe it? The two of us, assigned to work together.”

All his irritation, momentarily pushed aside by the sight of a face that has lingered in the forgotten chambers of his heart for the last decade and more, comes rushing back to him. _“Were_ you assigned to work with me?” he asks, and he can’t quite keep the sneer from his voice. “I was under the impression you were sent to spy on me.”

Sif’s brow furrows for a moment, and she shuts the door and invites herself to a chair. “I’m not here to spy on you,” she insists, but he can read in her body language that she’s not sure she believes her own words. “They just want me to assist you, and make sure my field reports are detailed; apparently yours have been a little vague. And . . . they asked me to include my observations about the validity of our work.”

“So, to spy on me,” he repeats, that old familiar irritation flaring up in his chest.

“I’m not going to spy on you,” she insists. “I’m here to stop criminals, help victims, and find the truth.”

She sounds sincere, and he feels bad needling her; it’s not her fault that she’s found herself a pawn in a game more far-reaching than she can currently imagine. “Well, we have that in common,” he says. “What do you know about my work down here?”

“Section Chief Eir called it the X-Files,” she says. “An ‘unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream.’ Said you’ve devoted your career to it.”

He nods. “The X-Files,” he repeats, gesturing at a series of file cabinets along the wall. “Where people send cases they label ‘unexplained.’ I solve cases the rest of the Bureau can’t, because they refuse to consider . . . extreme possibilities.”

“I mean, that sounds like a good thing. Solving unsolved crimes.”

He snorts. “It won’t be good for your reputation or your career. I’d get out while you can.”

“I couldn’t get out, even if I wanted to,” she says reasonably. “This assignment came from the top. I mean, even your—”

She hesitates, but Loki feels confident as to what she was going to say. “Even my father was in the meeting when you got the assignment?” he guesses.

“Yeah,” she says uncertainly. “That’s weird, right? He’s a senator. He hasn’t worked for the FBI in decades.”

“My father has his fingers in many different pies,” Loki says, irritation lacing his voice. “And he has . . . opinions about my current professional choices. I have no doubt assigning you was his idea: maybe a friend can reel me in.”

“Loki, I’m not here to spy on you or reel you in,” she insists. “I want to find the truth, just like you. And taking on cases that others have given up on—that sounds like a really good cause. I’m not really sure what you mean by ‘extreme possibilities,’ but I’m sure that with hard work, and facts and logic on our side—”

“A lovely sentiment,” Loki says drily. “It’s just that in my line of work, logic rarely seems to apply.” If she’s going to insist on staying, he might as well throw her into the deep end; maybe then she’ll understand what she’s getting herself into.

“For instance, maybe I can get your opinion on this,” he says, fitting the tray he’s been fiddling with into the slide projector and turning it on. The machine whirrs to life and the light blinks on, casting a picture onto a nearby screen: a forest. A young woman in a white nightgown, dead.

“This is Jessie Weston,” he says. “Oregon female, twenty-one. She walked out of her apartment complex in her pajamas just after 2:00 AM, and was found the next morning in a nearby forest. No explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing. Zip.”

He hits the button, and with a clunk, the projector moves to the next slide: a close-up of the victim’s hair. “The only thing of note is a massive knot in her hair below her right ear. This is notable because the security cameras at the apartment complex caught her leaving, and her hair is perfectly normal.”

Sif is frowning at the projected image. “From walking through the forest?” she guesses. “Or maybe she had a struggle with whoever killed her?”

“Maybe,” says Loki. “But there are no other signs of a struggle, not in the area she was found, and not on her perfectly pristine white nightgown.”

Sif looks at him, eyebrows raised expectantly, and unexpectedly a grin surges to his lips. It’s just . . . it’s nice to have someone willing to listen to him for once.

He fights back the smile and clicks the slide projector again: new victim, same tangled hair. “Michigan female, twenty-one years old, last August. Same MO: left home in her pajamas, found in a forest, no explainable cause of death, hair in a knot below her right ear.” He clicks through to a few more slides. “And in Maine, and in North Carolina, and in California . . . eight young women in eight different states over an eleven-year period: all twenty-one years old, found in the woods in their pajamas, nothing to explain their deaths except a knot in their hair.”

Sif is staring at the projected image again. “Do you have a theory?”

“I have plenty of theories,” Loki says. “Maybe what you can explain to me is why it's Bureau policy to label these cases as ‘unexplained phenomenon’ and ignore them.”

Sif blinks at him a few times.

“Do you believe in the supernatural?” he asks, finally coming to the point.

Another few blinks. “Logically, I would have to say no.”

Loki nods, having expected that answer. But he gestures at the screen again, at the first victim, eleven years ago. “Many people would agree with you. But when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?”

A frown creeps over Sif’s face, as well it might; he imagines this is not what she expected she’d be getting when she joined the FBI. He knows her, knows that she believes in logic and facts and rules; even when they were kids, she was terrible at joining his games of make-believe, because her brain simply couldn’t jump off the tracks of what was understood and expected and ordinary and right before her eyes. So he’s not surprised when she says “Something killed those young women. It’s plausible that something was missed in the autopsies. And the hair thing . . . it’s plausible that this was a serial killer, which could explain those similarities. I can’t believe there are answers beyond science. You just have to know where to look.”

He’s not surprised that she’s so closed-off to the possibility of the supernatural, but he is disappointed. “That’s why they put the ‘I’ in ‘FBI,’” he says snarkily, because childhood friend or no, if Sif is going to get in the way of his work, he sees no need to treat her like anything but the roadblock she is. “You’d better pack a bag tonight. We leave for the very plausible state of Oregon tomorrow morning.”

But despite his sharp words, he hesitates at the door of the office and glances back at Sif, who’s leafing through the case file on Jessie Weston that he left on his desk. He doesn’t need or want a partner. But he can’t deny that it’s nice to have someone to talk to—a sound in the X-Files office other than the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

That it’s Sif makes it better and worse: they were friends once, and maybe that will help her believe him. But he was so in love with her once, and while he’s usually not ashamed when people call him Loco Odinson or make fun of his work on the X-Files—everyone at the FBI is an idiot, including his brother Thor, so why should he care what they think of him?—the thought of having bright, beautiful Sif Tyrsdottir think ill of him . . . it matters. It shouldn’t, but it does.

He bites back a sigh and closes the door.

. . . . . .

 _May 9, 1993_ _  
_ _Medford, Oregon_

. . . . . .

When Loki answers the knock on his motel room door, Sif storms in without waiting to be invited. “My room was ransacked!” she informs him. “The vials containing that powdery substance I found in the woods, all my notes, my camera with my pictures of that . . . that _thing_ we found in Jessie Weston’s grave: they’re all gone. But what’s insane is that my room door was still locked from the inside when I got there, and I already checked the motel security cameras: there’s no evidence of anyone entering or leaving. All day.”

Loki blinks at her a few times. “I suppose this wouldn’t be a good time to inform you that I just got a call from the Medford PD. The body we found in Jessie Weston’s grave has vanished as well.”

Sif stares at him a long moment. And then she sinks down onto edge of his bed. “Loki, what is happening?” she demands. “None of this makes any sense.”

“I did try to warn you,” he says, and she shoots him a dirty look.

“Not helpful,” she informs him, and flops back on the bed. “They really didn’t cover anything like this at Quantico.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Loki agrees.

“So tell me,” she says, staring up at the ceiling. “I know you have a theory. Half the stuff that’s happened, you’ve acted like you expected it. So tell me what you think is going on.”

Loki is silent for a long moment. And then he says a single word: “Fairies.”

She lifts her head to look at him, but he’s dead serious. “Great,” she says, dropping her head back down to the mattress. “I’m trying to solve a crime, and you’re convinced Tinkerbell did it.”

“I’m serious,” says Loki. She hears a shuffling sound, and she sits up to see that Loki has seated himself on the floor, his back leaning against the bed. “It’s the knots in the hair. They’re called elf-locks, and they’re a sign that the fae have been present. Usually found in animals and children, and usually not accompanied by death. I’m not sure why this fairy, or these fairies, are killing adults. But I’m sure they’re responsible.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” she demands. “Fairies! Is this a Disney movie?”

“Modern pop culture depictions of the fae make them out to be cute little flying people, completely harmless,” Loki says conversationally, as though this is a normal thing that normal people talk about. “The truth, I believe, is far closer to the old stories: they’re incredibly powerful, incredibly capricious, incredibly cruel when they choose to be. They seem to be able to change size, but their natural form is quite close to human. They live in the wilds, often underground. Luckily for us, for the most part they leave us alone. But every now and then . . .”

“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” she says. “Loki, what happened? How did you go from the smartest guy I know, Oxford graduate, most promising new profiler the violent crimes division at the FBI ever had, to believing that _fairies_ killed Jessie Weston?”

He just turns and looks up at her, his expression guarded and wary, and she realizes she didn’t mean it rhetorically. She wants to understand what happened to her old friend. So she says softly, “I mean it. I want to know. I want to understand. I _need_ to understand, if I’m going to be any help as your partner.”

Loki stares up at her a moment longer. He’s taken to wearing his hair carefully combed and slicked down, which, along with his well-tailored suits, makes him look quite grown up (and rather attractive, she has to admit). But she’s clearly caught him just after a shower, because his hair is tousled and wavy—the way she remembers it from their childhood—and he’s in a t-shirt and pajama pants. It makes him look younger, like the Loki she used to know.

“You’re not going to believe me,” he says finally.

“I’ll keep an open mind,” she promises. And she slides off the bed so she can sit on the floor next to him, her knee encouragingly pressed against his.

He glances over at her. And then he stares straight ahead. And finally he speaks. “Something has been wrong,” he says quietly, “all my life.”

She blinks.

“As long as I can remember,” he goes on, still not making eye contact, “I’ve seen things other people don’t seem to see. Glimpses of figures, out of the corner of my eye. Lights in the forest at night. Faces at windows. I hear voices sometimes, especially when I’m outside. No one else ever hears them.”

Sif blinks. “What do they say?” she asks carefully.

“Nothing I understand. The word ‘Helblindi’ a lot, whatever that means. They laugh, too.”

“Okay,” she says slowly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “They sound like hallucinations. It sounds like a mental health problem.”

That is indeed exactly what she was thinking.

“But there was more. When my hair was longer when I was a kid, I’d get elf-locks all the time. Just like the victims in these cases. It drove my mom crazy, so she finally cut my hair really short. Stuff would go missing or get moved around in my room at night, or I’d wake up and there’d be an acorn or a handful of leaves on my nightstand that wasn’t there the night before. I’d wake up with bruises and no idea how they’d gotten there.”

Her brow furrows.

“When I used to mention this stuff to my parents, when I was a kid, they just thought it was harmless. ‘An overactive imagination,’ my mom used to say. But other kids would make fun of me for it. By the time you moved to the neighborhood, I’d learned to keep it to myself.” He sighs. “And the older I got, the more I thought what you’re thinking now: I was imagining things. Of course I could never really explain away going to bed with the doors and windows locked and waking up to find a shoe missing and a pinecone left in its place. But I did my best to ignore it.”

Sif stares at him, amazed that, whether he’s crazy or telling the truth, there’s this whole other side to one of her oldest friends that she was never even aware of. “You were good at keeping this to yourself in high school,” she observed.

“I got very good at lying then,” he says, still not looking at her. “Luckily, it’s not like this stuff was happening all the time, especially if I avoided anything resembling a forest.”

“That’s why you’d never go camping with us,” she realizes.

He nods. “I saw things in the woods far more often than anywhere else. And I realized that stuff happening in my house usually came after I’d been out in the woods. So I stayed close to civilization, all the time, and all the weirdness really tapered off after a while.”

Sif has no idea how to respond. They were hallucinations; they have to have been hallucinations. But how can she say as much to one of her oldest friends, and now her partner at work?

“Like I said, even I started to believe I’d made them up,” Loki says. “Maybe it really was an overactive imagination. And maybe I was clumsier and more forgetful than I realized, and I was injuring myself and losing my things without realizing. Maybe I twisted my hair as I slept. By the time I went to college, I basically believed that, though I still instinctively avoided the outdoors.”

“And then?” she prompts, because it’s clear there’s an “and then.”

He hesitates, then looks over at her. “I’ve never told anyone all the details of this,” he says. “I’m only saying it now because if you’re really going to stick around and be my partner, you should know what you’re getting into.”

She nods. “I understand.”

Another hesitation, then: “Just don’t tell anyone, okay? _Anyone._ Please.”

She nods a little more slowly this time. “Okay.”

“A year after Thor and I joined the FBI, we went home to Massachusetts over Halloween; it was Fandral’s birthday—you remember Fandral—and he wanted to have a little reunion for old time’s sake. Volstagg and Hogun were there too.” He hesitates. “You were living in Florida, then, I think. Still teaching exercise science at that university.”

She nods. “Fandral invited me, but I couldn’t justify traveling that far.”

“We all hung out for a while, and then they decided they wanted to go to the woods. They were mostly all pretty drunk, and I guess that sounded cool: midnight on Halloween, let’s go out in the dark scary woods and . . . prove we’re manly, I guess. I wasn’t drinking; I’ve never liked it.”

She does remember that about him; drinking alcohol tends to make him violently ill.

“My first instinct was to say no, but it’d been so long since I’d heard or seen anything, and I’d convinced myself I made it all up when I was a kid. So I agreed, and we went out in the woods with flashlights. The other four were drunk and making this huge racket, but I was feeling more and more creeped out—like we shouldn’t be there, like something’s watching us. We stepped into this clearing and suddenly there was a man standing in the beam of my flashlight: long hair, long robe, this smile like . . . I still get goosebumps, thinking of that smile. He said that word again: ‘Helblindi.’ And then he pulled out a knife, or maybe a dagger, and I realized he was going to attack me. I dodged but he managed to sink it into my shoulder.”

“He stabbed you?” Sif demands.

Loki goes on gloomily. “The others didn’t see the guy at all; they just saw me collapse, bleeding all over the place, and by the time I looked up he was gone. They rushed me to the ER, and when I was done being stitched up, the cops wanted to know what happened. I told them the truth: we ran into a long-haired man in the forest and he stabbed me in the shoulder, so the cops spent the next few weeks on the lookout but no one ever saw anyone matching that description. And after that it started again—everything from when I was a kid. I woke up the next morning in my old bedroom, and for a split second there was a face at my window, and my watch was missing.”

Quite involuntarily, Sif shivers.

“At least the indoors things stopped when I went home to DC a few days later, but it was like now that I’d been reminded about them, I started seeing lights and hearing voices all the time. It slowed down eventually, but by that point I was terrified: maybe I really am crazy.”

He sighs. “I discovered the X-Files by accident a few months later. I started reading this case file and it was like I was reading a description of my own life: this guy sees people who aren’t there and lights in the forest, and he hears laughing when he’s alone, and his daughter’s always waking up with her hair in these impossible tangles. It was the first time in my life that I realized I might not be alone in all this; I might not be the only crazy one. I read every single case file over the course of a few weeks. And I _knew_ . . .”

He turns to her, his face serious, his voice earnest. “There are patterns, Sif. Recurring motifs. People who’ve never met reporting the same incidents, thousands of miles apart. Too many to be coincidences. Details that were never released to the press, so there’s no way people would know about them. And I realized: there’s something going on. And the way some of these cases got cast aside without even being investigated, even when there are clear crimes being committed . . . there are people in power trying to suppress all this.”

He shrugs and concludes, “And I’ve dedicated my life to finding out what’s going on.”

“You’ve been out in the woods the last few days,” Sif points out, desperate to find something sensible to grasp onto. “Why weren’t you affected?”

“I’ve learned all the ways people have found to keep the fae away,” Loki says. “I always wear a piece of clothing—usually an undershirt—inside out. I carry bread and a sprig of St. John’s wort in my pocket. At home, I’ve replaced all the window frames at my condo with wood from an ash tree. It helps.” He hesitates. “Although I did see floating lights when we were in the forest yesterday evening. Only from a distance, though.”

This is, obviously, the most nonsensical thing Sif has ever heard. Loki sounds so matter-of-fact, but this has to be the result of hallucinations. It _has_ to be. She would write it off entirely . . . if this were not Loki, her old friend. If Loki did not sound as absolutely serious as she has ever heard anyone sound. If she had not seen things over the last three days that she cannot explain.

He turns to her and pulls the collar of his t-shirt over and down, so she sees the scar on his shoulder: two inches long and perfectly straight. Like he’s been stabbed by a dagger.

“I know you think I’m crazy, Sif. But this is all real.”

And Sif looks up at him, at his perfectly serious expression. And her conviction that he’s crazy wavers, just a little.

. . . . . .

 _May 14, 1993_ _  
_ _Washington, DC_

_. . . . . ._

Case #401-HQ-1224  
Field Report  
Agent Sif Tyrsdottir

_. . . in conclusion, I can neither refute nor deny Agent Odinson’s claim that Jessie Weston’s death was supernatural in origin. I can only lay out what facts I can personally attest to and what evidence remained after my motel room was ransacked:_

_Jessie Weston’s death was both unexplainable and identical to the deaths of seven other young women across the US over the last eleven years. When Agent Odinson and myself exhumed her casket, we found her body missing, having been replaced by the corpse of something else; my best guess was something in the orangutan family, though the body was stolen from the Medford PD before a precise identification could be made. Several locals reported seeing unknown persons in the forest in the days leading up to Weston’s death._

_To connect these dots into a clearer picture would require a level of guesswork that I do not feel comfortable with; we simply do not have enough evidence to reach a conclusion._

_The only concrete thing I_ can _contribute is the vial entered into evidence: after my motel room was ransacked, I realized that I had dropped one of the vials I’d collected in the trunk of our rental car, so it was not stolen. It contains a powdery substance I collected from the ground at the crime scene. I have had it tested by the FBI labs, and they have concluded that the material cannot be identified. What this means and whether it has any bearing on the case remains unknown._

Sif saves her file and sits back with a sigh, rubbing her temples. This is certainly not what she expected she’d be getting into when she was summoned to the FBI headquarters last week: unsolvable cases and mysterious figures in dark woods and Loki Odinson telling her fairy tales.

On a whim, she opens her e-mail and looks at the message Thor sent her this morning, in response to her reaching out to him and explaining that she wants to look more into Loki’s stabbing (which is technically not a lie).

 _I wish I could be more helpful,_ he says, _but it’s just like Loki told you. I would swear on my life that we were alone in those woods. And suddenly Loki is on the ground, bleeding like crazy from his shoulder. The doctor at the ER confirmed that it seemed to be from a double-edged knife or a dagger. Could’ve been a drunken accident, but I know Loki wasn’t drunk that night—he’s never been a big drinker, it makes him sick—and I know that none of us were carrying any weapons. I have no idea what happened that night. And to be honest, the mystery still haunts me._

She stares at the e-mail, and then she stares at her (utterly useless) field report. She has no idea what’s going on, no idea what she’s gotten herself into by agreeing to this X-Files assignment.

But one thing’s for certain: it’s going to be interesting.

. . . . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you thinking "Wait a second, we never actually got any answers as to what happened to those women"? Well, WELCOME TO THE X-FILES, BUDDY. That show rarely gives satisfactory answers. To anything.


	2. Case file #401-HQ-1227

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is definitely tilting more toward horror than I usually go, with zombie attacks and such. So if that's not your thing . . . sorry. :D

. . . . . .

 _June 17, 1993_ _  
_ _Washington, DC_ _  
_ _Case file #401-HQ-1227_

. . . . . .

“I’m telling you,” says Magni, smearing an obscene amount of butter on his roll, “you’ve got to get out of there. People are already starting to call you ‘Mrs. Loco.’ You don’t want that kind of reputation to stick.”

“Are they?” Sif asks, and if she had to quantify it, she’d say she’s feeling 85% irritated for her own sake and 15% irritated for Loki’s sake.

He nods. “So, think of it as a trade. You get Loco Odinson to help me on this case, I’ll see what I can do to get you re-assigned to my team.”

“Don’t call him that,” Sif says automatically. “His ideas may be out there, but he’s a good agent. And why do you want his help so much if you think so badly of him?”

“Because he’s the best profiler the FBI’s seen in years. He’s wasted down in that basement. Besides, he’s supposed to be good at this kind of thing,” Magni says airily. “Unsolved cases, I mean. Isn’t that what you guys do all day? Investigate leprechauns and stuff?”

“We investigate crimes, just like you,” Sif says. Automatically her mind goes over the last six weeks she’s spent as Loki’s partner; after the Jessie Weston case, they investigated a murder, which ended up being thoroughly mundane, and they looked into the disappearance of a teenage girl. Both Loki and the mother had been fairly certain something supernatural was afoot, but then the girl suddenly reappeared and the mother refused to talk to the FBI anymore. Loki took it as evidence of a coverup. Sif was just glad the girl was home safe.

“Come on,” Magni says persuasively. “Loco’s not going to talk to me. He hates . . . everyone. And then, just think, you could get out of that basement office. Come on, Siffy, you know you want to.”

Sif wonders if Magni was this condescending in college and she’s forgotten about it. To be honest, she’d been surprised when the guy invited her to lunch out of the blue. But he’s one of the shining stars in the violent crimes unit; if he could really be persuaded to put in a good word for Sif . . .

“And what do you get out of it?” Sif asks. She’s not ready to say yes, because she’s not certain she does want to get transferred out of the X-Files. It’s her assignment, and she’s not one to shirk her duty. And Loki used to be one of her closest friends, even if some of the things he says and does are, well, loco.

“This case really has people riled up,” says Magni, popping a whole shrimp into his mouth. “Eir’s on our backs. If we get this solved quick, it’ll be a major stepping stone toward my promotion. And once I’m promoted, I can bring you up the ranks with me, Siffy.”

She’s really going to punch this guy if he calls her ‘Siffy’ again. Still, she’s not ready to burn this bridge yet. “I’ll ask him,” she says. “But I can’t promise anything.”

. . . . . .

 _June 18, 1993_ _  
_ _Baltimore, Maryland_

. . . . . .

It feels strange to have more than just the two of them at a crime scene, Loki decides as he and Sif duck under the caution tape and flash their badges at the local uniforms. And then he reflects on how quickly he became accustomed to Sif’s presence; it’s been six weeks and already he’s thinking of her as an integral part of the X-Files.

“Thanks for agreeing to help, Odinson,” Magni says.

“I was just so flattered to be asked,” he says, dry as bones, and he sees Sif grin, even as the sarcasm goes right over Magni’s head.

(Honestly, though, he _is_ a little bit flattered to be asked.)

“So here are the facts.” Magni gestures at the office in disarray. “Baltimore male, forty-nine. Working late when he died. Found here in his office . . . which was locked from the inside. No sign of forced entry, no idea how the killer locked the door after himself when he left. Or herself.”

“Cause of death?” Sif asks.

“Total exsanguination,” says Magni. “But there’s not an drop of blood at the crime scene.”

Sif nods. “I imagine the janitors appreciate that.”

Now it’s Loki’s turn to fight back a laugh.

Magni gives them both quizzical looks. “And this isn’t the first time this has happened lately,” he goes on. “Three other victims with the same MO in the last two weeks. All four attacks happened between dusk and dawn. No connection between them, other than the attacks happening within a mile radius of each other.”

“It’s an interesting case,” Loki agrees, reaching his hand out for the case file of the most recent victim. He scans it while Magni and Sif talk quietly; he hears Sif say “Could just be a very clever, very determined serial killer” and fights back a snort. Of course Sif would think that.

Something jumps out at him, and he looks up at Magni. “What’s this about a nightmare and a rock?”

“Just the ramblings of a hysterical housewife,” he says dismissively. “The guy’s wife was in Canada, visiting her sister, when it happened. He called her the morning before he died, very shaken. He claims he had a dream of himself dying in this exact way. In his dream, the person who killed him left a rock at the scene. When he woke up, there was a rock on the nightstand that he was sure hadn’t been there when he went to bed. The wife said he was freaking out, and she was too. She made sure the police wrote it all down in their report.”

Loki can feel himself light up. “Very, very interesting,” he says. “Any of the other victims report dreams?”

“Is that really a pertinent piece of evidence?” Magni demands.

“It might be,” he says, and Magni rolls his eyes.

“I asked for your help as a profiler, not an expert on voodoo.”

“Voodoo?” Loki repeats. “Not even close.”

“So what is it?” Magni asks tauntingly. “With the blood being drained, I assume we’re thinking vampires?”

“Of course not,” Loki says, and he sees both Sif and Magni relax until he adds, “A vampire couldn’t have entered this room; they have to be invited in,” and now Sif is rolling her eyes while Magni stares.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. Based on the evidence, I think we’re dealing with a draugr.”

Sif drops her face into her hand.

“A what?” Magni demands.

“A draugr,” he repeats. “A type of revenant common in Scandinavia, though there have been reports of them in the US.”

“What is a revenant?”

“Like a zombie,” Loki says helpfully.

Magni rolls his eyes. “Look, if you want to give me something useful—like a criminal profile I can actually use—I’ll be thankful for the help. If you want to chase zombies, though, do it on your own time, at your own crime scene. Do you understand me?”

Loki smiles beatifically. “I mean, you’re certainly speaking English, if that’s what you mean.”

Magni rolls his eyes and stalks away. Sif looks about ready to do the same.

. . . . . .

“You’re mad at me,” Loki observes as they climb into their Bureau-issued sedan.

“Of course I am!” Sif exclaims, barely keeping her voice in check as the embarrassment of that encounter washes over her anew. “What was the point of making that scene in front of Magni and everyone? A dragger, Loki? Really?”

“Draugr,” he corrects her. “And the point was hopefully locating this thing before it kills again. Because it will. Draugrs have an insatiable hunger and a terrible jealousy of anyone still living. If we don’t find where it’s buried—where it spends its days—and destroy the body, more people will die.”

“What are you basing this on?” she demands.

Loki puts the keys in the ignition but doesn’t turn the car on yet, instead turning to her and counting off the evidence on his fingers. “One, the dream and the rock. Draugrs are known for their ability to enter dreams, and they always leave an object behind in the physical world, so the person knows the encounter was real. Two, the locked room. Draugrs can move through solid objects. Three, the drained blood. That’s a common way for draugrs to kill.”

Sif fights the urge to smack her palm to her forehead. “Is this another fairy thing?”

“Oh, the draugrs have very little to do with the fae,” Loki says dismissively. “Although, come to think of it, they can both live in tombs. Hmm. Maybe there’s a connection there worth looking into.”

She blinks. “So we’re not just looking for fairies?”

“Of course not,” Loki says. “Have I not made that clear yet? There’s a whole magical world out there that most people never see. The fae are perhaps the most intelligent and powerful inhabitants, but they’re far from the _only_ inhabitants.”

“Oh good,” Sif grumbles. “So there’s even more crazy ideas you might have.”

“They’re not crazy,” Loki says tightly, and Sif realizes she’s pushed too hard. But she can’t stop, not with that humiliating encounter at the crime scene still resonating through her mind.

“You have no evidence of this zombie thing.”

“Then I’ll find it.”

“Loki, they don't want you involved! They don't want to hear your theories. That's why Eir has you hidden away down in the basement.”

“You’re down there too,” Loki snaps, and then looks away.

Sif looks at him a long moment, at that profile that, after six weeks, is becoming as familiar to her as the sight of her own face. And then she sighs and digs out the address Magni gave her, along with a map of the area. “We’re half a mile from the victim’s house. Let’s check it out.”

“I thought they didn’t want me involved,” Loki says, a little snidely.

“Look,” she says, her tone conciliatory, “whether it’s a serial killer or a draugr, we’re going to need proof. Magni says that they didn’t even look for the rock at the victim’s house.”

Loki turns to her, one eyebrow raised. “You want to find the rock?”

“Maybe a draugr left it,” she says, and can’t manage to even pretend like she finds the possibility convincing. “Or maybe the killer broke in the night before, to stake out or taunt his victim, and the vic mistook it for a dream. Either way, I think Magni is making a big mistake, ignoring it as a piece of evidence.”

Loki watches her a long moment, then nods. “I think that’s wise,” he says.

Things aren’t fixed between them, but the mood in the car is warmer as they pull away from the curb.

. . . . . .

 _June 19, 1993_ _  
_ _Baltimore, Maryland_

. . . . . .

“I can’t believe it,” Sif groans as she hangs up the phone at the FBI field office.

Loki looks up from his paperwork. “Something tells me I _will_ believe it, whatever it is.”

She sighs and looks squarely at him. “Don’t be smug about this,” she says.

“Too late.”

“That was the lab. They’ve analyzed the soil they found on that rock. Based on the nutrient and microbe makeup, they’re fairly confident it came from a cemetery. Something with pre-1870s burials, before vaults became popular.”

Loki grins. “Definitely too late. I’m definitely smug about this.”

“The serial killer could’ve picked it up in a cemetery,” she reminds him as he walks to the board and examines the map of the murders.

“Look,” he says, “the four murders are in a cluster here, right? And right in the middle of that cluster?”

“Cleffin Cemetery,” she reads with a sigh.

He grins at her. “I’ll get the keys.”

An examination of the cemetery reveals a grave from 1842 at the very edge of the cemetery; the ground in front of it is freshly disturbed. Not six feet away, across the fence, a new Jiffy Lube is being erected. “New construction pretty close to the grave,” Loki observes. “The corpse might interpret it as a threat to his resting place. That might have caused him to rise from the dead.”

Sif is not convinced, but she does agree that the freshly dug dirt is suspicious. An hour later, they have submitted a request to exhume the grave. An hour after that, Magni is storming into the Baltimore field office, flames in his eyes.

“What do you two think you’re doing?” he demands. “I didn’t authorize this request.”

“Technically, we don’t require your authorization,” Loki says. “We’re following a lead, based on that rock you ignored.”

“We want to look into why this 150-year-old grave was disturbed,” Sif explains. “And we plan to send a soil sample from it to the lab, to see if we can prove that whoever killed your most recent victim took the rock from that cemetery. Even if you don’t believe that the killer is buried in that cemetery, at least knowing that he picked up a rock from it to taunt his victim is a step toward identifying him, right?”

“Plus,” Loki adds, “the killer is definitely buried in that cemetery.”

Sif rolls her eyes.

“I have real leads to follow,” Magni snaps. “Not this zombie movie nonsense. Someone called in a tip about suspicious activity in a neighborhood near the most recent murder. You coming, Sif?”

There’s such conviction in that question, such blithe confidence that Sif will tag along with him, that she rises from her seat automatically. Then she hesitates. When she looks over at Loki, he’s clearly doing his best to act nonchalant, and she’d almost believe his act, if not for the fact that he can’t make eye contact with her.

Something in her chest clicks into place. Loki has crazy ideas, but she’s been assigned to be his partner, and what’s more, she likes the guy; he was her friend when they were kids, and she likes him still, despite all the weird things he says and does. So she looks at Magni. “Thanks for letting me put in time with your team,” she says evenly. “But I am officially assigned to the X-Files.”

“I can fix that,” Magni begins, and Loki starts to his feet.

“Who says the situation needs fixing? Maybe she’s happy where she is.” 

Sif shakes her head, quieting them both. “I can take care of myself.”

Magni stares at them, then stalks away, muttering “You’re both crazy.”

Loki and Sif stand together, not quite looking at each other, and it’s uncomfortable but somehow not in a bad way.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Loki says finally. “It’d probably be better for your career if you let him get you reassigned.”

Sif just sighs. “Why do you keep pushing this draugr thing with Magni? You know how he’s going to react.”

Loki shrugs. “Maybe I run into so many people who are hostile just because they can't open their minds to the possibilities, that sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation.”

Sif looks sideways at him. “You know, Loki, It seems like you were acting very territorial back there.” She hesitates. What is she saying? “Never mind,” she says, turning away.

But Loki stops her with the gentlest touch to her sleeve. “Of course I was,” he says, and she hasn’t seen him this open and honest since that night in the motel room on their first case. “In our investigations, you may not always agree with me but at least you respect the journey.”

She stares at him, and he quickly grows fidgety and steps back. “But if you do want to leave the X-Files, I wouldn’t hold it against you.” And now he’s the one turning away.

Sif stares at him a long moment. That’s the closest Loki has ever come to saying that he actually likes having her around, and she’s surprised at how it warms her through. So as he starts walking away, she jogs to catch up. “I don’t know,” she shrugs, “I’m pretty excited to find out what’s going on with that grave.”

Loki glances at her sidelong, and she catches a hint of a smile on his lips.

. . . . . .

 _June 20, 1993_ _  
_ _Baltimore, Maryland_

. . . . . .

The grave is empty.

He’d suspected it might be; that’s why he insisted they do the exhumation after sundown. But Sif is astonished. “Grave robbers?” she asks. “But why? Everything we can find about this guy suggests he wouldn’t have been buried with anything interesting.”

Loki just looks at her.

“Or maybe he rose from the dead and clawed his way to the surface,” she says.

He decides to pretend she didn’t sound incredibly sarcastic when she said that. “My thoughts exactly.”

“Now what?” she demands.

“Now we wait. He has to come back here before morning.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Four hours later, Loki is really starting to regret the three Diet Cokes he drank in an attempt to stay awake.

“What is it?” Sif asks when he glances over at a nearby gas station for the fourth time in the last thirty seconds.

“Just wondering how fast I can get to the bathroom and back.”

“Just go,” she laughs. “According to your theory, the killer won’t be back until dawn. We’ve got hours until then.”

So Loki runs to the gas station.

And of course—just his luck—when he returns, it’s to see Sif pinned to the ground by a massive figure.

It’s the draugr, Loki knows instinctively, and his instinct is proven right when he draws close enough to see that the thing’s skin is a grayish blue and it smells of death and decay.

The thing has a hand around Sif’s throat. Loki is looking around for something heavy when he sees Sif manage to wriggle her arm free enough to pull out her gun and empty her clip into the thing.

It doesn’t even faze her attacker.

“Loki!” she cries in a strangled gasp, and a surge of adrenaline rushes through him. With a strength he didn’t know he had, he tackles the thing from the side and manages to knock it off Sif.

But now its focus is off her and on him; it clambers to its feet and turns its ruined head toward him, and Loki feels the malevolence in that gaze.

“Crap,” he says, and back away.

It charges toward him.

Loki runs.

He jumps the fence to the Jiffy Lube construction site; conventional weapons won’t work on this thing, but something more heavy duty might. As he darts into the half-finished building, he can hear the lumbering footsteps of the draugr just behind him.

Fortunately, the construction crew left a few work lights on, probably to make it harder for would-be thieves to sneak in during the night, so he can see well enough to look around. There! He’d feared the crew hadn’t left anything useful behind, but in one corner he sees a forgotten sledgehammer. He darts for the tool and wraps his hand around the handle.

He glances back to see the draugr is just behind him, reaching out one massive hand, and he swings around and lifts the sledgehammer up in the same movement.

It catches the thing in the jaw. Bones and flesh made weak by decay give way easily, and its head goes flying, like a golf ball hit off a tee. Its body shudders, then drops; Loki only just manages to jump out of the way in time.

With a relieved and exhausted sigh, he drops the sledgehammer.

“Loki!” he hears Sif yell from somewhere outside.

“In here!” he says. “I stopped it.”

He glances down at the draugr to be sure that he did, in fact, stop it—beheading is usually enough for the undead, but it’s the sort of thing he’d hate to be wrong about—and is surprised to see the thing rapidly decomposing. He supposes it makes sense; now that it’s nothing more than a corpse, a hundred and fifty years of decay are catching up to it.

In a few moments, both head and body have vanished like they were never there.

Sif rushes in then, and in the work lights, he can see her light gray pantsuit is smeared with mud and other dark substances he doesn’t want to know the identity of. “Who was that?” she demands. “The size, the strength, the way he smelled . . .”

Loki just looks at her.

“Draugr,” she says. “Of course. How could I forget?” She steps toward Loki. “Where did he go?”

“It vanished,” Loki says. “I beheaded it, and that broke whatever power was keeping it animated, and it decomposed into nothing.”

“How am I supposed to believe that?” she demands. “How am I supposed to put that in a field report?”

“Now you see why I keep mine so vague,” Loki says helpfully.

“Maybe, whoever the killer was, you hit him but he wasn’t as badly injured as you thought, and he got away.”

“You think it survived my taking its head off with a sledgehammer?”

“Of course not,” she said reasonably. “But it’s dim in here, and you’re operating off very little sleep, and a lot was going on. Maybe you only think you killed him. Besides, you really want me to believe you took a man’s head clean off with a sledgehammer? This isn’t a cartoon.”

“Not a man,” Loki corrects. “A draugr. Already heavily decomposed.”

Sif doesn’t believe him, clearly. “Well, just in case my version of events is correct, let’s put out an APB for the assailant,” she says.

Loki opens his mouth, then shakes his head. “You know what? Fine. It’s a waste of time, but if it makes you feel better, go ahead.”

So she makes the call, leaving Loki to reflect on how two people can experience the same set of events in such vastly different ways. And to reflect on how sad and funny it is that the only person he’s ever found willing to take any part in his life’s work can’t even bring herself to consider the possibility that said life’s work is real.

Still, he thinks, glancing over at Sif, she’s here. She came running after him because she worries about his safety. She might not understand the burden he carries, but she’s helping him carry it anyway.

And he smiles.

. . . . . .


	3. Case file #401-HQ-1242

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, WHY did I decide to base this on the X-FILES, that show is SCARY which means this story is tipping ever more toward HORROR and I am too big a chicken to read the stuff, let alone write it.
> 
> Anyway, people think of the X-Files as being all about aliens, but that's really only a small chunk of it. In fact, there are a number of episodes that aren't even about the supernatural. This chapter is a tribute to my one of my favorite subgenres of episodes, "Mulder and Scully get trapped somewhere remote with a mysterious but not necessarily supernatural threat." In particular, it has nods to the episode Ice from season 1, which is the first absolutely great X-Files episode, and a great one to watch if you want an introduction to the series.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to CallistoNicol; she'll know why when she reads it. And then probably hate me a little. :D

. . . . . .

 _September 14, 1993_ _  
_ _West of Pismo Beach, California_ _  
_ _Case file #401-HQ-1242_

. . . . . .

They're several miles out to sea when Dr. Jansson, the CDC doctor with the thinning brown hair and the perpetual frown, turns to Sif and Loki. “Now, why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

Sif glances at Loki, who looks as baffled as she does. “We know exactly as much as you know,” he says. “We got the same info packet that you did.”

“But you’re FBI,” pipes up Dr. Syse, the wildlife biology professor with the curly blonde hair and the cautious smile. “Surely your bosses told you more than us.”

Sif shrugs. “Suttungr Gillingson invited seven friends to his vacation home on Callisto Island over Labor Day weekend. None were ever heard from again, other than a brief radio transmission, mostly static; the only part that could be understood was someone saying ‘—everywhere, we can’t get away’. When they didn’t show up again, Suttungr’s sister Gunnlöð came out to the island to check on them and she disappeared too. That’s all we know. Are we correct that you got the same info?”

Dr. Jansson still looks suspicious, like they’re deliberately holding vital information, but Dr. Syse looks convinced. “Well, at least we can make some guesses as to what the FBI is thinking from the makeup of this group,” she says. “Two FBI agents, so maybe they were attacked by other humans; a wildlife biologist, so maybe they were attacked by animals; and a doctor from the CDC, so maybe it was an infectious disease of some kind.”

“All good guesses,” Sif agrees. “And that’s literally all we know.”

Dr. Jansson finally seems to believe them, and he and Dr. Syse wander to the front of the boat, leaving Sif and Loki alone.

Sif turns to Loki. “No, but seriously, you must at least have an idea. Is this island supposed to be haunted or something?”

Loki raises an amused eyebrow. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then why—”

He sighs. “This was genuinely an assignment I couldn’t get out of. And believe me, I tried. This is a waste of our time.” He bites off the last four words like they personally offend him.

“Nine people are missing,” she reminds him gently.

“Yes, but it’s most likely a very hungry mountain lion or a garden-variety murderer. Which means this could have been solved by animal control or by any garden-variety FBI agent. We have more important things to do.”

She’s not going to talk sense into him when he’s in this mood, so she doesn’t try. “So why do you think we got this assignment?”

“Eir said something about mysterious disappearances being right up my alley, but I don’t know if she was being sarcastic,” says Loki. “She’s very inscrutable. My guess is that we’re either very highly thought of or very expendable.”

Sif nods. “Let’s pretend it’s the first one.”

. . . . . .

 _September 14, 1993_ _  
_ _Callisto Island, California_

. . . . . .

Callisto Island is a smaller than Loki is expecting (having visited the much larger Catalina Island as a teenager) but still big enough that searching it is going to take a while: maybe two miles square. Most of the island is steep-sided and hilly and surprisingly dry, all tall yellow grass and scrubby bushes. But the little harbor they sail into is lovely: turquoise water, sandy beach, a pathway lined with palm trees leading up to the most absurdly fancy beach house Loki’s seen in a while.

The fifth member of their party beams proudly, as though he can claim any credit for the house. “Beautiful, right?” He is Baugi Gillingson, cousin of Suttungr, who owns the island and who is among the party who disappeared over Labor Day. The guy is the very definition of slimy and has been hitting on Sif since they all met, and Loki hates the guy already.

“This part’s beautiful,” Dr. Jansson concedes. “But is this the only beach on the island? That’s not much.”

“There’s another harbor on the other side of the island,” Baugi says. “Beautiful beach. There’s a path from the back of the house straight to it.” He turns to Sif with what is apparently meant to be a charming smile. “Bet it has nice sunsets, too. Maybe we’ll have to check it out some time.”

Sif is a professional who shouldn't have to deal with this on the job, and that’s the only reason—honestly, the _only_ reason—that Loki irritably retorts “Maybe we should find out whether your cousins are dead before we plan any romantic outings.”

Sif snorts.

The captain of their boat is a cheerful middle-aged guy with tanned skin, sun-bleached hair, and the improbable nickname Bear; he finishes tying off the boat to the little dock and grins at the group. “Ready to go ashore!”

Sif nods and checks her holster for her gun. “Stay alert and don’t step foot onto the island until we tell you to. Agent Odinson and I will clear the house first.” The plan is to use the house as a base of operations and, if it becomes necessary to spend the night, to sleep there. But only if it’s safe to do so.

Loki pats his pocket, checking for the keys that Baugi gave them, then nods at her. And the two FBI agents step cautiously onto the dock.

The place has an eerie feeling, but Loki isn’t sure how much of that is the power of suggestion: knowing that people disappeared here, remembering that ominous radio call . . . Every now and then he convinces himself that he hears something rustling in the scrub off in the distance, but between the roar of the surf and the sigh of the breeze, it’s hard to hear much else.

Sif is silent and steady beside him, and despite being only a few months into her career as an FBI agent, she exudes a sense of confidence and competence that’s helping put Loki at ease. (Plus he knows she can hold her own in a fight. Better than he can, honestly.)

The front door is closed but unlocked. Sif and Loki exchange worried looks, then enter the house, guns drawn.

It takes what feels like ages to clear the house, but they’re able to ascertain that there’s no one there, dead or alive: not the eight vacationers, not Gunnlöð Gillingson, and not anyone who might be responsible for their disappearances. What they do find is suitcases still unpacked, clothes in the closets, toiletries in the bathroom, beach towels drying on the rails, half-eaten bags of chips on the table . . .

“So I guess we’re ruling out the eight vacationers packing up their bags and leaving,” Sif observes.

Loki nods. “If they left this island, it was under duress.”

Once they’ve checked every room, window and door, they go outside and signal the others to come to the house. And that’s when the first disaster of the outing occurs: on the way up to the front door, Bear wanders off into the grass to examine something, stopping by a scrubby little tree, and suddenly he cries out in pain.

“What is it?” Loki calls, drawing his gun.

“Something bit me,” he grumbles. “Right on the ankle. I think it was a spider.”

“Does it need to be looked at?” Dr. Jansson asks.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” says Bear, limping a little as he makes his way back to the group.

Ten minutes later he’s singing a different tune; when they all return to the front room after putting their bags away in the rooms they’ve chosen for the night, his limp is more pronounced and he’s wincing with every step. “Maybe you’d better take a look after all, doc.”

So Dr. Jansson sits him down on the couch and examines his ankle. “Definitely a spider bite,” he agrees. “Dr. Syse, you recognize this?”

Dr. Syse joins him and glances at it. “It must have been big. I mean, really big.”

“Great,” Bear grumbles.

“No, it’s good,” she says. “The larger spiders in California tend not to be too poisonous. I’d be more worried if it had been a bite from a small spider that was swelling like that.”

Dr. Jansson, who fortunately keeps a medical kit in his backpack, is spreading something clear on the bite and bandaging it up. “If she says it’s not poisonous, that’s a good sign. But if it’s causing you pain . . . I think you need to get it checked out at a hospital. Just in case.”

Bear immediately objects to the idea of abandoning them all, but Sif chimes in. “Better to get this looked at sooner rather than later. Besides, you can be to the mainland in 45 minutes, and if it’s not serious you could easily be back here by dinner. If it is serious, you can send someone else for us.”

Bear still looks doubtful, but after some more convincing, he limps off to his boat, promising to be back as soon as possible. “Radio if you need anything!” is the last thing he says before he’s out of earshot. Before long, they hear the roar of the engine and the boat pulling out of the harbor.

“Now we’re really stuck out here,” says Dr. Syse, her voice soft.

Loki shares her uncertainty, but this is the moment for the federal agents to be confident, not frightened. “And to make sure we’re not stuck out here for long, let’s get to work and solve this case. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can leave.”

. . . . . .

After lunch, they split up. Sif and Dr. Jansson stay at the house to look around, and the other three head out into the scrub: Baugi to act as guide, Dr. Syse to look for evidence of wild animals, and Loki to investigate and protect the other two. 

For over two hours they wander the south half of the island, coming across no sign of the missing vacationers or of any large animals. “Honestly, I don’t think this island could support any large predators,” Dr. Syse says. “Look at this. Where would they hide? What would they eat? The largest animal we’ve come across is those foxes, and they’re far too small—and too rare—to keep any sort of large animal alive.”

“A small predator?” Loki asks, but she shakes her head.

“If very motivated, a smaller predator could take down a human, but to take down eight of them before they had time to get off the island? Or to, you know, lock themselves in the house? I don’t buy it.”

“If a person was responsible,” Loki says, “I doubt they could still be here. No caves, no rock formations, and the plants are all waist high at most, except for the palm trees that were planted around the house.”

As they head back toward the house on their way to investigate the north end of the island, something white catches Loki’s eye over the edge of the hill, and the group makes its way in that direction.

“This is the other harbor I was telling you about,” Baugi says. “Good surfing.”

“Good sailing, apparently,” says Loki, gesturing toward the water. Because anchored out in the center of the harbor is a beautiful sailing yacht, clearly top-of-the-line.

“Wasn’t one of the men who disappeared into sailing?” Dr. Syse remembers.

“Njǫrd Oaken,” Baugi confirms. “Friend of my cousin’s. He’s won some international long-distance races. Practically lives on his boat.”

“The vacationers were dropped off by a chartered yacht, weren’t they?” Dr. Syse asks. “And then never radioed asking for the return trip?”

“Njǫrd must have sailed here on his own, to meet his friends,” Loki speculates. “Maybe they didn’t contact the charter company to set up a return trip because they thought Njǫrd could take them back to the mainland.”

The yacht must be investigated, obviously, so the group makes its way down to the second harbor. “You two stay here and keep a lookout,” Loki says, stepping out of his shoes and removing his jacket.

(“Why is your t-shirt on inside out?” Baugi asks, and Loki says simply, “It’s a very long story.”)

It’s a short swim out to the yacht. The _Skadi_ is as empty as the house was, but more tidy; Njǫrd obviously packed up carefully when he came ashore. It’s a very fine boat, small enough to be comfortably sailed by a single person but large enough to have a sleeping berth, albeit a small one. Loki has some experience with sailing; Odin has a close friend who is an avid sailor, and when Loki was young they were invited out with him multiple times every summer. So he knows enough to see that this is a fully sail-powered boat—not one of those sailboats that has a motor to aid in navigating through crowded harbors—and to find the radio. Out of curiosity, he tries it; it’s broken.

He also finds the log books. If he’s understanding them correctly, Njǫrd visited Callisto Island four times over the last two years, along with visiting a number of other islands around the Pacific. When not racing, the man apparently lives a life of leisure and tropical vacations.

Well, lived, as the case may be.

When he goes back on deck, he’s surprised to see Dr. Syse standing alone on the beach, and he quickly gets swims back to her. “Where’s Baugi?”

“He got bored . . . ten, fifteen minutes ago?” the doctor says. “Said he wanted to go find the path that leads back to the house, just to make sure he knows where it is.”

“That shouldn’t take fifteen minutes,” says Loki, and that ominous feeling that’s been weighing on his mind all day comes back full force. He gathers his things—putting wet feet into dry shoes is never pleasant—and they hurry in the direction Baugi left.

They quickly find the path that leads to the house, and they’re only thirty or forty yards up it when suddenly Dr. Syse lets out a startled gasp. Loki follows her pointing finger to see Baugi lying motionless in the scrub some ten yards off the path. And Loki grimaces and draws his gun.

. . . . . .

Sif is nearly done documenting the state of the house when the back door bangs open and she hears Loki yelling her name. She hurries out onto the second floor landing, where she can see out into the massive two-story living room, and gasps: Loki and Dr. Syse are carrying Baugi between them, and Sif doesn’t have to get any closer to know that the man is dead.

When they’ve all gathered around the body, Loki explains what happened. “There wasn’t anything near him when we found him, but we did notice these.”

He pulls up the hem of the man’s pants to show multiple bites, all very similar to the one on Bear’s ankle earlier; the skin around them is swollen and red. They take to counting the bites while Dr. Jansson examines the rest of the body.

“A preliminary examination leads me to believe toxins from these bites paralyzed him so entirely that his heart stopped beating,” he says. “He wouldn’t have lasted long in that state.”

Sif shoots a worried glance at Loki. “Bear,” she mouths.

“I know,” he mouths back.

“Eleven bites,” Dr. Syse announces. “The likelihood of a single spider biting him that many times, on both his legs, is low. Plus I think I’m seeing variability on the fang spacing. This was multiple spiders.”

“And they killed him that fast?” Sif asks.

“Multiple bites in a short period of time can do real damage.” Dr. Syse hesitates. “Spiders are not my personal area of study, but I know a little. I didn’t see any noticeable webs on the island; perhaps these were hunting spiders. They tend to be nocturnal, so this may not have been a hunting behavior; Baugi may have accidentally disturbed their nest and they acted to protect it.”

“Multiple spiders in a nest?” Sif asks, barely suppressing a shudder.

“Certain species are what are called social spiders. They live together, hunt in packs, share prey . . .” But then she frowns. “But I’m not aware of any spiders of this size that are native to California that behave that way, and I’m not aware of any that kill that fast. Perhaps spiders from elsewhere stowed away on a boat to arrive here.”

Then Loki tells them about the boat in the harbor, and about Njǫrd’s multiple visits to the island over the past two years. “So if he, or another guest with a boat, came straight here after visiting somewhere these spiders were found . . .”

“Just two spiders at sexual maturity could produce hundreds, even thousands of offspring over the course of a year,” Dr. Syse says. “And perhaps those numbers grew too large to be supported by the local insect and small mammal population. It’s hugely unlikely, of course, but theoretically an especially large and aggressive species could turn to . . . larger prey.”

Dr. Jansson frowns. “Wait, so are we now thinking that _spiders_ are what killed all those people? Seriously?”

Loki shrugs. “We’ve been here for four hours and we’ve had two attacks, one resulting in a death. And we knew to be careful. Imagine eight people tromping through the bushes for several days without a care in the world.”

“Though we’ll continue to investigate other avenues,” Sif says, though she admits she doesn’t know what other avenues to investigate. Plus, that radio message is ringing through her head: “—everywhere, we can’t get away.” Did they mean _they’re_ everywhere? She fights down another shudder.

“But if we stay here overnight, we should be inside with the doors and windows sealed shut well before dark,” says Dr. Syse. “The spiders will be out hunting at night.”

“Or we should get off this nightmare island,” says Dr. Jansson angrily. “Where’s Bear?”

Loki and Sif exchange glances. “Getting treated may have taken longer than we expected,” says Sif.

“Or . . .” Loki doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t have to.

“It was a single bite,” Dr. Jansson points out a little desperately. “And he showed no signs of paralysis.”

“Either way, we should call the mainland and get a status update.” Loki jogs up the stairs, presumably to get their radio, and Sif turns to the others.

“And we should check the entire house again. Last time we were looking for human invaders. Now we should look for spiders.”

Cautiously, they begin to make their way through the house, the two civilians basically cowering behind Sif all the while. Loki joins them halfway through their search of the ground floor, radio in hand. “I can’t get it to work.”

“Let me try,” Dr. Jansson says, all bossy self-importance. But after a few minutes, he has to admit defeat too; the radio appears to be broken.

Loki and Sif exchange another glance.

“We’ll wait for Bear,” Sif says with more confidence than she feels. “If he started feeling like he was going to pass out, surely he would have radioed for help. And we know the radio in his boat was working.”

Together they search the entire house, and on a top floor balcony, behind a folding chair that’s leaning up against the wall, they finally find the corpse of a dead spider. And it takes all of Sif’s self-control not to gasp in horror, because that thing is _huge._

The men look equally put off by it, but Dr. Syse leans in close, fascinated. “It looks like a huntsman spider,” she observes. “Native to Australia. See how the legs are a bit rotated from what you’d expect to see? It allows them to flatten themselves and fit in very narrow spaces; they're often found living under a bit of loose bark. Plus, one species, _Delena cancerides,_ is a social spider, like we’ve been discussing—hundreds of individuals living together in logs and the like. But I've never seen one this size, and I've never heard of any of this dangerous. They're very shy around humans, and not very venomous.”

Loki frowns. “Njǫrd’s logbook shows him visiting uninhabited islands near Australia frequently. Suppose a population of these huntsman spiders finds itself stranded on an island without enough of their usual prey to keep them fed. Might they not develop and adapt to be larger and more aggressive and more venomous?”

Dr. Syse shrugs. “I guess it's possible, but it's all speculation at this point.”

“It’s also nearly dusk,” Sif points out. “Should we get inside?”

Everyone agrees, but Dr. Syse decides to stay up in the master bedroom for a while; its huge windows provide a sweeping view of the surrounding area, which is well lit by the lights on the exterior of the house. “I know it’s unlikely that we’ll happen to see any of these spiders hunting,” she says, “but if we did, that should be incredibly useful for understanding them.”

No one has anything better to do with their evening, so they join her, standing in tense silence by the windows, their eyes fixed on the stretch of ground outside that’s illuminated by the exterior lights. And after nearly an hour, they’re rewarded for their patience.

A small fox, one of the species native to the island, darts out of the bush out in front of the house, running like the hounds of hell are at its heels. Immediately they see why: a brownish mass comes swarming after it, moving impossibly fast.

Sif grimaces. “Are those . . .?”

The front of the mass surges forward; apparently the spiders can jump, which is just peachy. The fox yelps, then stumbles, then is still. Then it disappears under the brown mass.

They all stand in silence a while. And then Loki says, “I think we should check the doors and windows again.”

Sif is the first to step out of the hallway and onto the landing overlooking the massive living room, and Loki nearly runs into her when she comes to a dead stop. She whips around to silence them all with a finger to her lips and her eyebrows nearly at her hairline.

The civilians freeze, sufficiently terrified to obey without asking, and Loki leans over her shoulder to see what she’s looking at. She sees him tense, and she doesn’t blame him: the living room is absolutely infested with massive brown spiders, many of them on the couch where they left Baugi’s body. Apparently they weren’t going to pass on a meal.

“What is it?” Dr. Jansson mouths.

Loki points out toward to the living room, then moves his hand like it’s crawling. The good doctor blanches, but Dr. Syse lets out a little whimper.

It’s impossible to tell if the spiders noticed—can they hear? Sif’s not even sure—but she gestures for them to step quietly back into the hallway. Dr. Jansson takes a single step, and—just their luck—the floor creaks loudly.

That, the spiders noticed; she can tell because part of the mass downstairs suddenly starts swarming up the _walls,_ could this get any _worse,_ and Sif hisses “Run!”

She’s fast and manages to get out in front of the group. They follow her through a door in the hallway, and she’s slamming it closed and jamming a towel under the crack in the door before the others have had time to react.

“Why did you lead us here?” Dr. Jansson hisses. “Now we’re trapped!”

“Better to spend the night in a defensible position than risk it out there,” Sif hisses back. “We’ll never outrun those things.”

“But a bathroom?” Dr. Syse whispers.

“This is a good spot,” whispers Loki, who’s busily plugging up the sink drain. “One door, no windows, and with no carpet, we can easily see whether there are any gaps along the floorboards.”

“Exactly,” Sif responds, pleased that Loki picked up on her reasoning so quickly. She’s been busily making sure her towel seal under the door is tight, and once she’s feeling confident, she goes to plug up the shower drain. Loki is checking under the sink, and while he whispers to her that there are some openings for pipes that he doesn’t like the look of, they’re in luck: there are babyproofing cabinet locks on the doors, so he locks them tightly. There’s not much they can do about the vent overhead, other than hope that the spiders aren’t smart enough to get up there and that the slits in the vent cover are too small for them to get through.

“Then if we’re waiting it out in here, let’s be silent,” whispers Dr. Syse. “Many spiders hunt by following vibrations.”

The others nod. Sif seats herself carefully in front of the door, and Loki seats himself in front of the cabinet he just locked. Dr. Syse makes herself comfortable in the bathtub, and Dr. Jansson settles on the floor in front of it.

It’s going to be a long night.

And it is possible the worst night Sif has ever had. Every noise she hears has her heart in her throat; when the water softener kicks on downstairs, she nearly loses it. She knows there’s no way she’ll fall asleep, and the others seem just as frightened, but somewhere around two in the morning, Dr. Syse dozes off; Dr. Jansson follows her within the hour.

On the floor near her, their knees almost brushing, Loki keeps his own silent vigil. At one point, their gazes catch, and in that gaze she sees a vulnerability she rarely sees in Loki—in fact, the only time she can remember him looking like that was that night in the hotel on their first case, when he told her about seeing things all his life. And without quite thinking it through, she reaches out and squeezes his knee, rather astonished when Loki grabs that hand in his own and squeezes. They smile at each other, small and exhausted and wry, and then Sif loses her nerve and drops his hand and goes back to looking at the ceiling.

But thinking about the novel sensation of holding Loki's hand distracts her from her worries. And most of all, no spiders find their way into the bathroom. And that’s what makes that awful night bearable.

. . . . . .

 _September 15, 1993_ _  
_ _Callisto Island, California_

. . . . . .

Toward dawn, Sif dozes a time or two; Loki thinks he does as well. Finally he lifts his watch and shows it to her: 7:45, and the sun should be well up by now. She nods in agreement, and he sees some of the tension leave her shoulders.

Still, the civilians are still asleep, and he sees the value in giving the spiders as long as possible to return to their little hidey-holes. So he stays where he is.

At 8:30, Sif finally dares to whisper. “Do you think Bear is dead?”

The two doctors by the bathtub don’t stir, so Loki dares to whisper back, “Or incapacitated.” Sif nods, looking drawn and haggard, and Loki whispers, “If you could see yourself now, would you stop yourself from joining the FBI?”

She grins. “Maybe. I thought it’d be a criminal that got me, though. Or one of your fairies.”

“You joke, but they killed that girl in Oregon.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.

They're silent a moment. And then Loki offers, “This isn’t what I expected when I joined the FBI either.”

“You’ve done nothing but defy expectations since you joined the FBI,” Sif points out. “Maybe this is the universe’s revenge.”

That hits Loki harder than he expects. After a long moment of turmoil, he whispers, “I’m sorry you got dragged into this. Whether I got this assignment because they know I like the unexplained ones or I got it as punishment because the higher-ups don’t like me, it’s probably my fault you got dragged to Nightmare Island.”

“It’s the job,” says Sif firmly. “People were missing. I came here to get answers, just like I would with any case. Even if I die, I’ll know I did my duty as an agent.”

“Very noble,” says Loki. “I think I’d rather shirk my duty and survive.”

She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, aren’t you glad to have me as a partner now? Imagine if you had to do this assignment alone.”

Loki shudders at the thought. And he looks at Sif, his old friend and his new partner, looking bedraggled and exhausted, having just spent the night guarding the towel that is the only thing between them and certain doom, and he’s so glad that she’s by his side that he couldn’t express it even if he were willing to do so. And then he says, “Eh, you’re all right.”

She gestures for him to lean close. And when he does, she flicks his ear.

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Jansson wakes, then shakes Dr. Syse awake as well; they look hugely relieved to have survived the night. But now the question is: what now?

Dr. Syse favors staying put in the bathroom. “The spiders may have returned to their nests at dawn, but they may have stayed put in the house, knowing there’s prey here. We should wait for Bear to come back.”

“Bear’s not coming back,” Dr. Jansson retorts; apparently he lost faith in their boat captain at some point in the night. “Either he abandoned us or he’s dead. We should get the radio, fix it, and call for help.”

“We left it in the living room,” Loki reminds him. “Where most of the spiders were last night. If they’re still there . . . besides, even if we get it, fix it, and get hold of someone, it’s forty-five minutes before they reach us. And if we disturb any spiders while we’re getting the radio . . .”

“Then what’s your brilliant idea?” Dr. Jansson bites back.

“The balcony off the bedroom down the hall has an exterior staircase leading to the back patio,” Loki says. “We take it and then beeline it for the other harbor. And we’ll sail Njǫrd Oaken’s yacht back to the mainland.”

Dr. Syse perks up. “You can sail?”

“Of course,” says Loki, and then Sif’s skeptical look makes him add, “I’ve never really done it entirely by myself. But I used to help my dad’s friend when he’d take us out sailing when I was a kid.”

“Ah,” says Dr. Jansson flatly, “so we escape the spiders just to drown when you capsize the boat. Brilliant.”

“I can do it,” Loki insists, which is a statement he thinks is at least 75% likely to be true.

“Seriously? You want your first solo sailing outing to be open ocean? Miles from shore?”

“Can either of you sail?” Loki retorts. Their deflated looks are all the answer he needs.

“We should just stay here,” Dr. Syse insists, and that starts the argument all over again.

This goes for some time, none of the three willing to give way, before Loki notices that Sif is saying little. He turns to her. “Sif, you have to see that the boat idea is the only way.”

She frowns. “There’s a lot of risks in that plan. Mainly that you don’t know how to sail.”

“I know,” he insists. “I’ve just never done it entirely on my own before. But I can do it.” She frowns, and he leans forward. “Sif, you have to trust me.”

She looks doubtfully at him, hazel eyes fixed on blue-green in the artificial glow of the bathroom lights. If it were anyone else, Loki might try to put on a trustworthy expression, but Sif would see through his crap. She always does.

“How can I—”

“Because you know me,” Loki insists. “You know me well enough to know I wouldn't say I could do this unless I knew I could.”

Sif stares at him, and he wonders what she sees—lonely little Loki, her childhood friend who he sometimes suspects she only tolerated for Thor’s sake? Or Loco Odinson, her partner who drags her into mayhem and probably destroyed her hopes for a stellar career at the FBI? Neither one would inspire much comfort.

But after a few long moments, she nods. “Agent Odinson and I are going for the boat,” she informs the other two. “You can stay here if you want and we’ll send help, but personally, I’d take your chances with us, if I were you.”

Dr. Syse stares, wide-eyed, and finally reluctantly nods. Dr. Jansson is not at all pleased, and makes sure to make that known, but eventually he gives in, not wanting to be the only one left behind.

“We’ll sneak as quietly as we can through the house,” Loki says. “When we get to the ground, follow my lead. And don’t say a word.”

So they all climb to their feet, and Sif inches the door open; after a moment she nods and opens it the rest of the way.

As silently as can be managed, the four creep down the hall to the bedroom Loki indicated. At one doorway, Sif motions for them to stop, and points through a doorway. Loki peeks in to see a brown mass poking out from the edge of one of the curtains: some of the spiders did stay inside last night.

They walk even more quietly after that.

Luckily the door to the balcony is well oiled, and they sneak through without incident. Outside, the morning is bright, the sky blue, the breeze cooling on their skin, and it feels almost comical after the night they just had. At least the breeze is a good sign for their ability to sail. Loki leads the way down the stairs, then makes his way carefully to the path to the second harbor. The water has just come into sight through the palm trees when there’s a loud crack: Dr. Syse has stepped on a branch.

There’s an answering rustle in the brush.

Loki isn’t waiting to find out what it is. “Run!” he hisses, and the four break into a run. He doesn’t look back until he is knee deep in the water, the others by his side. There on the shore behind them are about a dozen giant spiders, perhaps alerted by the breaking tree branch; perhaps they’d only just returned from hunting and were still alert, despite the daylight hour.

But what’s most important is that they seem to have no intention of following them into the water (which is good news, because Loki’d had no idea if these things could swim). He backs away, keeping his eyes on them as long as possible, until the water’s too deep to allow it. And then they all turn and swim for the boat.

And (thank goodness) it turns out Loki does remember enough to sail the boat, a fact he intends to rub in Dr. Jansson’s face once they’re out of earshot of Sif. With only a little trial and error, he gets it out of the harbor. They circle around the island—not entirely smoothly, but hey, Loki's never sailed a boat on his own before—just to make sure no boats have pulled into the main harbor while they were gone.

The harbor is empty; the house stands silent and inviting among the beautiful palm trees, no hint of the horrors that lurk inside.

“If I never see that island again,” Loki mutters to Sif, “it’ll be too soon.”

He points the boat out toward the open water, and they’re on their way home.

(And if he can only read the various displays and dials well enough to point them east . . . well, hopefully that’s good enough to hit California.)

Seven miles or so from Callisto Island, they’re intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel. “You the folks from Callisto Island?” asks the man who greets them. “We answered a distress call yesterday from a local guy, Bear. Found him unconscious on his boat. Hauled him to the hospital, and this morning he regained consciousness and started shouting that someone needed to go back out to the island to get you guys.”

Dr. Syse hugs Dr. Jansson, who tolerates it with relatively good cheer. And Loki claps a hand on Sif’s shoulder.

Hours later, when they’ve made a full report to the Coast Guard and the FBI, and experts are planning what to do with this island full of killer spiders, Loki finally finds a moment alone with Sif. “And here I thought it was just going to be a nice few days in the sun,” she jokes.

Loki gives her a rueful smile, and then he hesitates. Expressing sincere affection is really not his style, and every nerve in his body is screaming for him to walk away and not do this. But Sif supported him today, and he wants her to know how much he appreciates that. “Look, Sif,” he says. “Thank you for trusting me this morning.”

She shrugs. “Like you said, I know you.”

“Yeah, which is why you probably shouldn’t have trusted me.”

At that she laughs. “Okay, so when we were kids you loved playing pranks and using trickery to get out of stuff you didn’t want to do. And now that we’re adults, we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of stuff . . . and you still like using trickery to get out of stuff you don’t want to do.”

“Accurate.”

“But I know you. I know you’re smart, and I know you’re competent, and I know that when things get truly serious, I can count on you.”

Loki grins, and they stand quietly together for a while. And then Sif says, “I think you should know, I’m never going outside again.”

“Agreed.”

. . . . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Researching this chapter is the WORST THING I HAVE EVER DONE.


End file.
